This time around, Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick placed some of the blame on a video game industry that “teaches young people to kill”. Republican house minority leader Kevin McCarthy of California went on to condemn video games that “dehumanise individuals” as a “problem for future generations”. And president Trump pointed to society’s “glorification of violence”, including “gruesome and grisly video games”.

These are the same connections a Florida lawmaker made after the Parkland shooting in February 2018, suggesting that the gunman in that case “was prepared to pick off students like it’s a video game”.

But, as a researcher who has studied violent video games for almost 15 years, I can state that there is no evidence to support these claims that violent media and real-world violence are connected.

As far back as 2011, the US Supreme Court ruled that research did not find a clear connection between violent video games and aggressive behaviour. Criminologists who study mass shootings specifically refer to those sorts of connections as a “myth”. And in 2017, the Media Psychology and Technology division of the American Psychological Association (APA) released a statement, which I helped craft, suggesting reporters and policymakers cease linking mass shootings to violent media, given the lack of evidence for a link.

Particularly in the early 2000s, dubious evidence regarding violent video games was uncritically promoted. But over the years, confidence among scholars that violent video games influence aggression or violence has crumbled.

Reviewing all the scholarly literature

My own research has examined the degree to which violent video games can – or can’t – predict youth aggression and violence. In a 2015 meta-analysis, I examined 101 studies on the subject and found that violent video games had little impact on kids’ aggression, mood, helping behaviour or grades.

A key element of that problem is the willingness of professional guild organisations such as the APA to promote false beliefs about violent video games (I’m a fellow of the APA). These groups mainly exist to promote a profession among news media, the public and policymakers, influencing licensing and insurance laws.

They also make it easier to get grants and newspaper headlines. Psychologists and psychology researchers like myself pay them yearly dues to increase the public profile of psychology. But there is a risk the general public may mistake promotional positions for objective science.

It’s bad enough that these statements misrepresent the actual scholarly research and misinform the public. But it’s worse when those falsehoods give advocacy groups like the NRA cover to shift blame for violence onto non-issues like video games. The resulting misunderstanding hinders efforts to address mental illness and other issues, such as the need for gun control, that are actually related to gun violence.